Chapter XI.—Abstraction from Material Things Necessary in Order to Attain to the True Knowledge of God.

Now the sacrifice which is acceptable to God is
unswerving abstraction from the body and its passions. This is the really
true piety. And is not, on this account, philosophy rightly called by
Socrates the practice of Death? For he who neither employs his eyes in the
exercise of thought, nor draws aught from his other senses, but with pure
mind itself applies to objects, practices the true philosophy. This is,
then, the import of the silence of five years prescribed by Pythagoras,
which he enjoined on his disciples; that, abstracting themselves from the
objects of sense, they might with the mind alone contemplate the Deity. It
was from Moses that the chief of the Greeks drew these philosophical
tenets.30703070 [See p. 316,
note 4, supra.] For he commands
holocausts to be skinned and divided into parts. For the gnostic soul
must be consecrated to the light, stript of the integuments of matter,
devoid of the frivolousness of the body and of all the passions, which
are acquired through vain and lying opinions, and divested of the lusts
of the flesh. But the most of men, clothed with what is perishable,
like cockles, and rolled all round in a ball in their excesses, like
hedgehogs, entertain the same ideas of the blessed and incorruptible
God as of themselves. But it has escaped their notice, though they be
near us, that God has bestowed on us ten thousand things in which He
does not share: birth, being Himself unborn; food, He wanting nothing;
and growth, He being always equal; and long life and immortality, He
being immortal and incapable of growing old. Wherefore let no one imagine
that hands, and feet, and mouth, and eyes, and going in and coming out,
and resentments and threats, are said by the Hebrews to be attributes
of God. By no means; but that certain of these appellations are used
more sacredly in an allegorical sense, which, as the discourse proceeds,
we shall explain at the proper time.

“Wisdom of all medicines is the
Panacea,”30713071 [Analogies
in Bunsen, Hippol., iii. 75, and notes, p. 123.]
writes Callimachus in the Epigrams. “And one becomes wise
from another, both in past times and at present,” says Bacchylides
in the Pœans; “for it is not very easy to find the
portals of unutterable words.” Beautifully, therefore, Isocrates
writes in the Panathenaic, having put the question, “Who,
then, are well trained?” adds, “First, those who manage well
the things which occur each day, whose opinion jumps with opportunity,
and is able for the most part to hit on what is beneficial; then those
who behave becomingly and rightly to those who approach them, who take
lightly and easily annoyances
and molestations offered by others,
but conduct themselves as far as possible, to those with whom they have
intercourse, with consummate care and moderation; further, those who
have the command of their pleasures, and are not too much overcome by
misfortunes, but conduct themselves in the midst of them with manliness,
and in a way worthy of the nature which we share; fourth—and this
is the greatest—those who are not corrupted by prosperity, and are
not put beside themselves, or made haughty, but continue in the class of
sensible people.” Then he puts on the top-stone of the discourse:
“Those who have the disposition of their soul well suited not to
one only of these things, but to them all—those I assert to be
wise and perfect men, and to possess all the virtues.”

Do you see how the Greeks deify the gnostic life
(though not knowing how to become acquainted with it)? And what knowledge
it is, they know not even in a dream. If, then, it is agreed among us that
knowledge is the food of reason, “blessed truly are they,”
according to the Scripture, “who hunger and thirst after truth: for
they shall be filled” with everlasting food. In the most wonderful
harmony with these words, Euripides, the philosopher of the drama, is
found in the following words,—making allusion, I know not how,
at once to the Father and the Son:—

“To thee, the Lord of all, I bring

Cakes and libations too, O Zeus,

Or Hades would’st thou choose be called;

Do thou accept my offering of all fruits,

Rare, full, poured forth.”

For a whole burnt-offering and rare
sacrifice for us is Christ. And that unwittingly he mentions the Saviour,
he will make plain, as he adds:—

“For thou who, ’midst the heavenly gods,

Jove’s sceptre sway’st, dost also share

The rule of those on earth.”

Then he says expressly:—

“Send light to human souls that fain would know

Whence conflicts spring, and what the root of ills,

And of the blessed gods to whom due rites

Of sacrifice we needs must pay, that so

We may from troubles find repose.”

It is not then without reason
that in the mysteries that obtain among the Greeks, lustrations
hold the first place; as also the laver among the Barbarians. After
these are the minor30723072
[Analogies in Bunsen, Hippol., iii. 75, and notes, p. 123.] mysteries, which have some
foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is
to come after; and the great mysteries, in which nothing remains to be
learned of the universe, but only to contemplate and comprehend nature
and things.

We shall understand the mode of purification
by confession, and that of contemplation by analysis, advancing by
analysis to the first notion, beginning with the properties underlying
it; abstracting from the body its physical properties, taking away the
dimension of depth, then that of breadth, and then that of length. For
the point which remains is a unit, so to speak, having position; from
which if we abstract position, there is the conception of unity.

If, then, abstracting all that belongs to bodies and
things called incorporeal, we cast ourselves into the greatness of Christ,
and thence advance into immensity by holiness, we may reach somehow to
the conception of the Almighty, knowing not what He is, but what He is
not. And form and motion, or standing, or a throne, or place, or right
hand or left, are not at all to be conceived as belonging to the Father
of the universe, although it is so written. But what each of these means
will be shown in its proper place. The First Cause is not then in space,
but above both space, and time, and name, and conception.

Wherefore also Moses says, “Show
Thyself to me,”30733073Ex. xxxiii. 18.—intimating most clearly that God is
not capable of being taught by man, or expressed in speech, but to
be known only by His own power. For inquiry was obscure and dim; but
the grace of knowledge is from Him by the Son. Most clearly Solomon
shall testify to us, speaking thus: “The prudence of man is not
in me: but God giveth me wisdom, and I know holy things.”30743074Prov. xxx. 2.
Now Moses, describing allegorically the divine prudence, called it
the tree of life planted in Paradise; which Paradise may be the world
in which all things proceeding from creation grow. In it also the Word
blossomed and bore fruit, being “made flesh,” and gave life
to those “who had tasted of His graciousness;” since it was
not without the wood of the tree that He came to our knowledge. For
our life was hung on it, in order that we might believe. And Solomon
again says: “She is a tree of immortality to those who take
hold of her.”30753075Prov. iii. 18. “Behold, I set before thy face life and
death, to love the Lord thy
God, and to walk in His ways, and hear His voice, and trust in life. But
if ye transgress the statutes and the judgments which I have given you, ye
shall be destroyed with destruction. For this is life, and the length of
thy days, to love the Lord thy
God.”30763076Deut. xxx. 15,
16, etc.

Again: “Abraham, when he came to the place
which God told him of on the third day, looking up, saw the place afar
off.”30773077Gen. xxii. 3,
4. For the
first day is that which is constituted
by the sight of good things; and the second is the soul’s30783078 Or, “the desire of a
very good soul,” according to the text which reads Ἡ ψυχῆς
ἀρίστης.
The other reading is ἀρίστη.
best desire; on the third, the mind perceives spiritual things,
the eyes of the understanding being opened by the Teacher who
rose on the third day. The three days may be the mystery of the
seal,30793079 Baptism. [Into the
Triad.] in which God is really believed. It is consequently
afar off that he sees the place. For the region of God is hard to
attain; which Plato called the region of ideas, having learned from
Moses that it was a place which contained all things universally.
But it is seen by Abraham afar off, rightly, because of his being in
the realms of generation, and he is forthwith initiated by the angel.
Thence says the apostle: “Now we see as through a glass, but then
face to face,” by those sole pure and incorporeal applications of
the intellect. In reasoning, it is possible to divine respecting God,
if one attempt without any of the senses, by reason, to reach what is
individual; and do not quit the sphere of existences, till, rising up
to the things which transcend it, he apprehends by the intellect itself
that which is good, moving in the very confines of the world of thought,
according to Plato.

Again, Moses, not allowing altars and temples to
be constructed in many places, but raising one temple of God, announced
that the world was only-begotten, as Basilides says, and that God is one,
as does not as yet appear to Basilides. And since the gnostic Moses does
not circumscribe within space Him that cannot be circumscribed, he set up
no image in the temple to be worshipped; showing that God was invisible,
and incapable of being circumscribed; and somehow leading the Hebrews to
the conception of God by the honour for His name in the temple. Further,
the Word, prohibiting the constructing of temples and all sacrifices,
intimates that the Almighty is not contained in anything, by what He
says: “What house will ye build to Me? saith the Lord. Heaven is my throne,”30803080Isa. lxvi. 1.
and so on. Similarly respecting sacrifices: “I do not desire the
blood of bulls and the fat of lambs,”30813081Ps. l. 13. and what the Holy Spirit by
the prophet in the sequel forbids.

Most excellently, therefore, Euripides accords with
these, when he writes:—

“What house constructed by the workmen’s hands,

With folds of walls, can clothe the shape divine?”

And of sacrifices he thus
speaks:—

“For God needs nought, if He is truly God.

These of the minstrels are the wretched myths.”

“For it was not from need that
God made the world; that He might reap honours from men and the other
gods and demons, winning a kind of revenue from creation, and from us,
fumes, and from the gods and demons, their proper ministries,”
says Plato. Most instructively, therefore, says Paul in the Acts of the
Apostles: “The God that made the world, and all things in it, being
the Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
neither is worshipped by men’s hands, as if He needed anything;
seeing that it is He Himself that giveth to all breath, and life,
and all things.”30823082Acts xvii. 24, 25. And Zeno, the founder of the Stoic
sect, says in this book of the Republic, “that we ought
to make neither temples nor images; for that no work is worthy of
the gods.” And he was not afraid to write in these very words:
“There will be no need to build temples. For a temple is not worth
much, and ought not to be regarded as holy. For nothing is worth much,
and holy, which is the work of builders and mechanics.” Rightly,
therefore, Plato too, recognising the world as God’s temple,
pointed out to the citizens a spot in the city where their idols were
to be laid up. “Let not, then, any one again,” he says,
“consecrate temples to the gods. For gold and silver in other
states, in the case of private individuals and in the temples, is an
invidious possession; and ivory, a body which has abandoned the life, is
not a sacred votive offering; and steel and brass are the instruments of
wars; but whatever one wishes to dedicate, let it be wood of one tree,
as also stone for common temples.” Rightly, then, in the great
Epistle he says: “For it is not capable of expression, like other
branches of study. But as the result of great intimacy with this subject,
and living with it, a sudden light, like that kindled by a coruscating
fire, arising in the soul, feeds itself.” Are not these statements
like those of Zephaniah the prophet? “And the Spirit of the Lord
took me, and brought me up to the fifth heaven, and I beheld angels
called Lords; and their diadem was set on in the Holy Spirit; and each
of them had a throne sevenfold brighter than the light of the rising
sun; and they dwelt in temples of salvation, and hymned the ineffable,
Most High God.”30833083
From some apocryphal writing.